Hi folks!
New and first time Lexus owner (2024 NX 350 Fsport).
Came over from Mazda which I hated more than anything. So far, love the car. Drives like a dream and looks even better. However, there is something which has me scratching my head.

When I select my USB drive as the playback device, let's say I choose an album to play, there is no way to go back and see the list of songs on this album. If I want to select any other song on the given album I have to select "Browse" then find the current artist from the artist list and navigate to the alum again. This seems counter intuitive and utterly idiotic. Am I missing something or did Lex engineers pour out all their wisdom on the body/engine design and called it a day when it came to the infotainment system?

Curious to hear your thoughts!

 

My wife has given up trying to play music via USB because it keeps going to one folder and staying there. We also can't use Bluetooth for calls because of a major echo in the system. She also just took a trip and couldn't successfully use Android Auto (but that might have been some sort of user error). In our eyes, the entire infotainment system is a bust and we'd likely not buy another Lexus.

 

USB sourced music works fine on my NX450 but the navigation functions aren't the best. I can only play music off my Samsung S24+ if I initiate the play on the phone itself.

 

If your car supports it, I’d suggest using Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. In my opinion, they have easier-to-use interfaces for managing music and other media, and they might be better than the car’s built-in system.

 

I think this is an issue in general with most if not all car manufacturers. Infotainment systems are merely an afterthought. In my previous car it was nothing more than a gimmick... a pre-production gimmick! Having said that, at least it recognized all my files on the USB drive, though sometimes it would take 20-30 minutes.
The NX it seems, strictly sticks to the 9999 song limit and won't display anything above that number. I roll my eyes when car manufacturers boast and fawn over themselves how they thought of everything... except the music lovers.

 

I'd rather not store my entire music library on my phone because it's quite large. In addition, I'm not too crazy about BlueTooth streaming. I wish Lexus would put more effort behind their brand and just make these things work.

 

I think Lexus is far more likely to axe it completely rather than improve it, toss this feature onto the pile of 8 track, cassette, and CD players from bygone eras. If it wasn't for the fact that no additional hardware is required to support simple USB playing, they would probably have already ditched it.

USB playing was pretty much already obsolete 10 yrs ago compared with phone apps connected via BT, ACP, or AA. Why is USB interface obsolete when its so convenient having vast amounts of songs available on the tiny stick? I get it, that would seem to be an ideal case, copy thousands of files, plug it in, my entire library at my fingertips, everything should be wonderful, right? Well not really. That is exactly the issue - vast amounts of free floating un-indexed random data files of unknown source and quality. When using a phone app, the phone handles the song indexing, management, file decoding, play lists, album organization, artist organization, voice control, searching, matching similar songs, genres, tastes, etc. All of these complements of Google, Amazon, Apple, Spotify, etc. The Lexus interface (and programmers) have very little to do, it acts as a simple remote control to the sophisticated management capabilities already on the phone built and maintained by these global tech giants. On USB, none of that exists, its just a bunch of unorganized, unindexed files which can contain audio files using one of dozens of different possible encoding schemes and bit rates, with potentially inconsistent meta data, possibly stored on poor performing slow (ie cheap) memory chips on the USB device which can easily get corrupted by people not handling them correctly. Major PITA for the programmers to deal with that they simply don't have to worry about with phone apps. I'm thinking that probably Lexus programmers are actually doing very llittle to manage USB files now. Whatever dev platform they are using to create the Lexus interface probably comes already built in with some off the shelf basic file handling and play capabilities for USB files, and Lexus simply uses those built in basic functions with little attempt to do anything beyond that which is provided by the platform developer. I don't think Lexus wants to try to compete with the likes of Google, Apple, MS, Amazon, etc. Maybe some car companies are willing to put in that extra effort, but I think that's well outside Toyota/Lexus more conservative tendencies. Outside of playing the radio, or using some vehicle specific features, Android Auto (in my case, likely same for ACP) has significantly better capability and usefulness than the Lexus interface.

 

Instead of trying to make your car work the way you want. See how the car works. And use the best method

If there are limits on size. Reduce the size to fit the limit. I’m still driving an older GX. But does the new NX have an AUX audio input?

Not buying a Lexus again because of the way music is played? Every manufacturer has issues. The biggest is trying to get a car to integrate with the thousands of different phones and operating systems. Nothing is going to be perfect

 

We've done that. She gave up listening to music and we bought a Bluetooth speaker thing that mounts on the visor.

 

Don’t not give up. Just Quit! I was using a flash drive but plays everything thing alphabetical order. Been using iTunes on CarPlay and it works.

 

I am not a fan of using a phone for everything despite the convenience of doing so. When I bought the car, the salesperson looked at me strangely when I said that I'd not be installing any Lexus App on my phone. Anyway, it is mildly annoying that the infotainment does not recognize playlist extensions like M3U hosted on a USB device. I only have 5 playlists for my cars, so it was no problem to simply copy the files from the playlist into folders named after the playlist (Playlist 1, Playlist 2, etc). I also edited the metadata on the files in the playlists so that their album was named Playlist 1-5. Browsing to the playlist folder or "Play album Playlist One" plays my playlist 1. If I want to play something from USB not on a playlist, I'll just browse to the folder, play by artist, album, or whatever else gets me what I want to listen to.

 

Where did I say that I wouldn't buy a Lexus again because of this? I simply posed a question to an issue someone may by more familiar with than I. In fact, my post begins with me proclaiming my satisfaction with this vehicle.

 

That was aimed at me, I'm sure. And my statement about not buying a Lexus again wasn't based solely on this USB issue, but on the "Lexus Interface" in it's entirety.